- 43 minutes ago
Are 25 features of old houses really illegal to build today? After checking the claims against building codes, Elias Yoder finds that 12 hold up—while 13 are allowed with conditions, were never banned, or are still legal. The difference matters when you’re repairing, renovating, or buying an older home.
Explore knob-and-tube wiring, lead paint and pipes, cesspools, unvented gas heaters, unreinforced masonry, basement bedroom escape windows, balloon framing, and more. Along the way, learn why rainwater collection and aluminum wiring are not simply illegal, and how safety rules reflect lessons learned from real hazards. Building codes vary by state and county, so your local building office is the authority. A practical home renovation and building-code guide for old-house owners, DIY renovators, and anyone researching historic home features, residential safety requirements, and what you can legally build.
Explore knob-and-tube wiring, lead paint and pipes, cesspools, unvented gas heaters, unreinforced masonry, basement bedroom escape windows, balloon framing, and more. Along the way, learn why rainwater collection and aluminum wiring are not simply illegal, and how safety rules reflect lessons learned from real hazards. Building codes vary by state and county, so your local building office is the authority. A practical home renovation and building-code guide for old-house owners, DIY renovators, and anyone researching historic home features, residential safety requirements, and what you can legally build.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00There is a video going round with a list of 25 things in old houses that you supposedly cannot
00:06legally build anymore, and people keep sending it to me because I live in a house where most of them
00:12are still sitting there doing their job. I went through the whole list. 12 of them hold up.
00:19The other 13 are either allowed with conditions or never were against the law at all, or in two
00:26cases are flatly still legal today and somebody got it wrong. So you are getting the 12 that
00:33are real, and then you are getting the 13 sorted out because being told something is illegal
00:39when it is not is its own kind of harm. A man who thinks he is not allowed to do
00:44a thing
00:45does not do it, and nobody ever has to pass a law. One thing first, and it matters more
00:51than any item on the list. There is no such thing as a national building code in this
00:57country. What exists is a set of model codes written by a private body, and then every
01:04state and in a great many places every county decides whether to adopt one, which edition
01:11of it to adopt, and which parts to change. So two houses 40 miles apart can be held to different
01:18rules. When I say you cannot do a thing, I mean it is prohibited under the common model codes and
01:26in most places that enforce them. Your county is the authority, and the building office there will
01:33tell you in five minutes what I cannot tell you in an hour. Nobody in that video says any of
01:39that
01:39across 37 minutes, and it is the first thing a person needs to know. I gathered the whole of it
01:46into a book at EliasYoder.com. The book is the long version. If you want it, it is there. I
01:53will not
01:54mention it again. Now, before the list, I want to tell you about a window my grandfather cut that
02:00nobody asked him to cut. We were finishing the upper room of the shop, which was going to be where
02:06a
02:06hired man slept. There was a window at the gable end already, a small one high up, and when the
02:13inside
02:14was near done, my grandfather went out and marked a second opening on the long wall, low, big enough
02:21that a grown man could get through it, and he spent the better part of a day cutting it in
02:26and framing
02:27it and hanging a sash. I was 15, and I asked him why. Nobody required it. There was a window
02:34already.
02:35We had work waiting. He did not give me a lecture. He said he was not putting it there for
02:41me.
02:41He said he was putting it there for whoever is asleep in this room in 60 years on the night
02:48the
02:49stair is on fire. And then he said the thing I have come back to more times than I can
02:55count.
02:55Every rule in that book is somebody's bad day written down. The careful men were already doing it.
03:04That is what the whole of this list is. It is not bureaucrats hating convenience. It is a ledger of
03:12what went wrong, kept in the names of the people it went wrong for. Keep that in your head, and
03:19the 12
03:19make sense. 1. Knob and Tube Wiring
03:24Single wires run through the open air on porcelain knobs with ceramic tubes where they pass through a
03:32joist. It electrified this country, and it worked, and the open air actually cooled the wire well.
03:39You cannot install it new today. The reason is not the wire. It is everything that happened to it
03:46afterwards. 70 years of insulation going brittle, and then somebody blowing loose fill insulation
03:53into the cavity around a conductor that was designed to be cooled by air.
03:59One correction while I am here, because that video overreached. It says most insurance companies will
04:06not write a policy on a house with live knob and tube. Some will not. A good many will, at
04:13a higher
04:14premium, or on condition you have an electrician inspect it and sign it off. If you have it, that is
04:21a
04:21conversation with your insurer and not a verdict. 2. Lead Paint
04:27Banned in residential paint in 1978 and genuinely banned, not restricted. It was a better paint than
04:36anything we have now, which is exactly why people used it. It is also a neurotoxin, and the damage it
04:43does to a child's developing brain does not come back. I have covered what to do about the old layers
04:51in the popcorn sealing video, and I will not repeat it here. 3. Lead Pipe and Lead Solder
05:00The Safe Drinking Water Act amendments of 1986, and later rules, tightened what counts as lead-free.
05:08Lead was the plumber's metal because it bent round obstacles and lasted forever. There is no safe amount
05:15of it in a person and least of all in a child. Now I have to stop and correct that
05:21video because it put
05:23galvanized steel pipe in with the lead and said you cannot plumb a house with either one. Galvanized
05:30steel is not banned. It is code legal for water in most of the country right now. It fell out
05:37of use because
05:38it rusts shut from the inside and chokes your pressure, which is a reason not to choose it and
05:45not a law against it. 4. Asbestos Building Products
05:52Siding, Shingles, Pipe Wrap, Floor Tile, Sprayed Ceiling
05:57New manufacture and use of most of it is gone, and the old material comes out under licensed abatement.
06:04The dates and the testing are in the popcorn ceiling and knock-down texture videos in full,
06:10so that is all I will say about it here. 5. A New Cess Pool
06:17A pit, sometimes loose-lined with brick, letting sewage seep straight into the ground. The federal
06:24ban in 2005 covers large capacity ones, and a great many states now prohibit any new cesspool at all,
06:33which is the part that matters to a homeowner. It goes into the groundwater and from there into the
06:39wells of everybody downhill of you. That is the whole argument, and it is a good one. What goes in
06:46instead is an engineered septic system with a tank and a drain field, or a connection to the sewer if
06:54there is one to reach. And if you have an old cesspool on a place you bought, that is worth
06:59finding out
07:00about before it finds you out, because a good many states now make you replace it when the property
07:06changes hands or when it fails. 6. A Backyard Incinerator
07:14A brick or wire basket where you burned your own household trash, because for much of this country
07:20there was no collection. Air quality rules ended it across cities and whole states, and in most
07:27populated places lighting one now gets you a fine. 7. An Unvented Gas Heater in a Bedroom or a Bathroom
07:37Note where I put the fence. Unvented fuel-burning heaters are not banned everywhere for every room. In a
07:45bedroom or a bathroom they are prohibited, and the reason is that they put every product of combustion
07:51into the room, carbon monoxide included, and the people who died of it died asleep with the window
07:57shut against the cold. 8. Unreinforced Masonry in Seismic Country
08:05Brick holding brick with no steel in it and nothing tying the walls to the floors. It feels like the
08:12soundest thing you could build, and in an earthquake it comes down outward onto the pavement. After the
08:19schools came down in Long Beach in 1933 the rules changed. In seismic regions you cannot build it,
08:27and that is regional, and I am saying so. What is required now is reinforcing bar run through the
08:34masonry and bolted connections tying the walls to the floors and the roof so the building moves as one
08:41thing instead of coming apart into its pieces. And a good many cities have gone further and put their
08:47old brick buildings on a list to be retrofitted or pulled down, which is a hard thing to be on
08:53the
08:53receiving end of and is why you see steel plates bolted to the face of old brick fronts. 9. An
09:02untreated wood shake roof in wildfire country Split cedar, beautiful, good insulation, long lived. Also
09:11kindling nailed to the top of your house and in a wildfire the thing that gets you is not the
09:16wall of
09:17flame but the embers blowing miles ahead of it. In designated wildfire zones a new untreated shake roof
09:25is out. Treated shakes that meet a fire class are still allowed, so this is about the treatment as
09:32much as the wood. 10. A basement bedroom with no way out of it. This is the one my grandfather
09:39cut
09:40that window for, and it is the best thing on the list, so here are the numbers that video promised
09:46and never gave. Under section R310 of the residential code, a basement with a sleeping room needs an emergency
09:55escape and rescue opening, 5.7 square feet of clear opening, at least 24 inches high and at least 20
10:04inches wide. The bottom of it no more than 44 inches off the floor, so a person can get up
10:11to it, and if
10:13it is below grade, a window well of at least nine square feet with a ladder or steps if that
10:20well is deeper
10:21than 44 inches. And here is the trap nobody tells you. You can hit both of those minimums and still
10:29fail.
10:3120 inches by 24 inches is 480 square inches, and you need 821. The area is a separate requirement from
10:42the width and the height, and all three have to be satisfied at once. That opening is sized so a
10:50grown
10:50person can get out, and a firefighter in full gear can get in, both directions. That is why the numbers
10:59are
10:59what they are. 11. A true open balloon frame. Studs running unbroken from the sill to the roof, two or
11:10three
11:10stories in one piece, which was the standard way to frame for about a century. It leaves the wall
11:17cavities as open vertical shafts from the cellar to the attic. A fire in the basement goes up the inside
11:25of your walls like a flue and comes out of the roof before anybody upstairs smells it. I will be
11:32exact,
11:33because that video was not. Balloon framing as a method is not outlawed. What is required is fire
11:42blocking at every floor line. But an open balloon frame with nothing in those cavities is what you
11:49cannot build, and since the blocking is the entire difference, calling it the end of balloon framing
11:56is near enough. 12. A spiral as the only stair to a floor with bedrooms. A spiral tread is a
12:06wedge,
12:07wide at the outside and almost nothing at the inside, so every step lands differently. You cannot carry a
12:15basket or a sleeping child down one safely, and you cannot get a stretcher up one at all. Spirals are
12:23allowed as a secondary stair, and the code gives them their own smaller numbers, which I will give you
12:30since nobody else does. 26 inches of width, seven and a half inches of tread measured a foot in from
12:38the narrow edge, nine and a half inches of rise at the most, and six feet six inches of headroom.
12:46Every
12:46tread identical. What a spiral cannot be is the only way to a floor where people sleep. And that is
12:55the
12:55pattern on this whole list once you see it. Almost nothing is forbidden. Things are allowed on conditions,
13:03and the conditions are numbers, and the numbers came out of somebody getting hurt. That is the 12. Now the
13:1213,
13:1214, quickly because you have probably been told otherwise about all of them. A coal bin is not
13:19illegal. There is no rule anywhere against a storage bin in your cellar. A milk door is not illegal either.
13:29It is a hole in an insulated wall that no builder wants to cut, and that is a different thing.
13:36A laundry chute is allowed with rated construction and a self-closing door,
13:41which kills the casual version, but is not a ban. A steep attic stair is a question of numbers,
13:49and here they are. Seven and three-quarter inches maximum on the riser, ten inches minimum on the
13:57tread, six feet eight inches of headroom, and no more than three-eighths of an inch of variation between
14:04the tallest and the shortest riser in a flight. Build to those, and you can have your attic stair.
14:13Single-pane windows are not against the law. Energy codes set performance on the whole assembly
14:20with tradeoff paths, exemptions for unconditioned space, allowances on replacements, and exceptions
14:28for historic buildings. An operable transom over a door is fine in the great majority of houses,
14:36because the fire rating argument that killed it belongs to corridors in apartment buildings.
14:41A sleeping porch is not banned, it simply cannot be counted as habitable space, and that video says
14:47so itself at the end, while keeping it at number one. A fallout shelter is permits and engineered
14:54ventilation and egress, not a prohibition. A backyard hand pump well needs permits and setbacks,
15:02and is genuinely prohibited only where you are required to be on municipal water.
15:08Aluminium wiring, second correction. The alloy used in small gauges in the late 60s and early 70s
15:16is the problem, and the industry walked away from it. But aluminium conductors in the AA8000 series
15:23are recognized by the code today, so the flat statement that you cannot wire a house with aluminium
15:29is wrong. Vermiculite is not banned. The contaminated attic product out of the Libby mine
15:36is finished, and you still buy vermiculite by the bag for your seed trays. And urea formaldehyde foam,
15:44which that video is admirably straight about, had its ban thrown out in court. It died in the market,
15:51not in the law. And the rain. That video has collecting rain water at number three,
15:58and then tells you Colorado changed the law in 2016. So it is on a list of things you cannot
16:05do,
16:06with the date it became legal, attached. Catching water off your own roof is lawful
16:12nearly everywhere in this country, and some states pay you to do it. Of all the things people believe
16:19they are forbidden to do, that is the one they believe hardest, and it is not true.
16:24You. Two more things that belong on this subject, and were not in that video at all. Radon. 37 minutes
16:33on basement bedrooms and cellars and buried shelters without the word once. It is a gas that comes out
16:40of the ground. It is the second leading cause of lung cancer in this country, and the test is cheap.
16:46If
16:47you are finishing anything below grade, test first. And smoke alarms and carbon monoxide alarms.
16:55That video's whole argument is that we started counting the bodies, and the single code change
17:01that actually brought household fire deaths down is interconnected alarms in every sleeping area,
17:07which in many places applies to houses already standing. It is the cheapest thing on any of these
17:14lists, and it is the one that works. Now, why does a list of 25 come out when 12 is
17:21the number that holds?
17:23Nobody is lying on purpose, and there is no scheme in it. It is simpler and worse than that.
17:30Illegal is a stronger word than requires a permit, and a stronger word travels further,
17:36and a video is paid by the traveling. So the conditional quietly becomes the absolute somewhere
17:43between one telling and the next, and then it is repeated by somebody who heard it rather than looked
17:49it up, and in two or three passes the hedge is gone altogether. And the cost of that is not
17:56nothing.
17:57People give up on finishing an attic that would pass inspection. People leave a basement room as it is,
18:04with the window too small, because they heard you cannot have a basement bedroom at all,
18:09when the truth is you can, and here is the opening you need. The exaggeration takes away the thing the
18:16rule was trying to give you. I will finish where that video finished, because it got the ending right.
18:23Something was lost. A man could once drive a well in his own yard in a weekend, and wire his
18:30own house
18:30with a spool of wire and a bag of porcelain, and that is gone, and people who miss it are
18:36not being
18:37foolish. But a house full of lead and open wall cavities and an unvented burner in the bedroom was
18:44killing people, slowly and quietly and mostly children, and it stopped because the rules came.
18:51The house got less personal. It also got a great deal less deadly. That is the trade, and you can
18:59decide for yourself how you feel about it, but you should decide about the real trade and not an
19:05exaggerated one, which is why I spent half this video taking 13 things off the list. Every rule in that
19:14book is somebody's bad day written down. The careful men were already doing it. Tell me something in the
19:21comments. Go and look at your own house and tell me what is still in it. The bricked up coal
19:27door,
19:28the painted shut transom, the little cabinet in the kitchen wall nobody can account for,
19:34and if you have a basement bedroom, go and measure the window tonight and tell me what you get,
19:40because I would like to know how many of you are under 821 square inches and had no idea.
19:48Next time, I want to talk about what to look at before you buy a cheap piece of ground, because
19:54everything in this video is a thing you inherit when you buy an old place, and I have owed you
20:01that
20:01one since the Nine Ways video. I am Elias Yoder. I farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. None of this is
20:09legal advice, and I am not an inspector. Before you build anything, ring your county office,
20:16because they are the ones who decide, and they will tell you for nothing. The people who built
20:23this country with their hands knew that, and we are only just starting to remember it.